Entire verge&#x2F;vox are long form tabloids but with sophisticated wording which is deliberately contrarion. I&#x27;ve read polygon only once and they did come across as very, very good.

On HN we go by article quality, not site quality. The big sites all have occasional good stuff among reams of...less good stuff.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment&amp;query=%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;so...</a>

Also Vox media is a clickbait site - the same one that attacked people for social distancing to avoid Covid earlier this year as &#x27;tech bros&#x27;.Most of articles on Verge&#x2F;Vox are blogspam around other sources adding little to no value. Engadget covers gadgets, Ars Technica covers wider issues, the rest probably won&#x27;t be popular on HN.

Main discussion:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24146902" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24146902</a>

&gt; App stores give you incredible access to new users. You literally don’t have a way to get unto iOS devices w&#x2F;o the App Store.They give you &quot;incredible access&quot; because they&#x27;re basically the only access. Their OSes would be complete flops if app stores were the only option and nobody would use them...

&gt; You literally don’t have a way to get unto iOS devices w&#x2F;o the App Store.Yes, and that&#x27;s the problem that needs solving. If Apple allowed sideloading apps, every single of their justifications about App Store rules would start making sense. You either pay 30% and get a nice listing and discoverability, or you pay nothing but are completely on your own.

&gt; Why would anyone want to risk being deplatformed?App stores give you incredible access to new users. You literally don’t have a way to get unto iOS devices w&#x2F;o the App Store.

You mean what happended to the days of getjar.com where you can develop and upload whatever J2ME smartphone app without an overlord dictating the rules and enforcing a large cut of your revenues? I miss those days.Unfortunately, Apple is going to continue this nonsense unless people stop buying into their reality distortion spells.

I feel like making Apple devices and Apple&#x27;s store seem like two separate things doesn&#x27;t really make sense. The whole entire phone top to bottom is Apple&#x27;s store. The &quot;App Store&quot; is just a pretty downloader.

Once upon a time, there was a certain large and innovative American technology company. It invented incredible hardware devices, which it sold to end users. Each device was programmed to connect to this company&#x27;s network, and to access services provided by this company.A large and growing ecosystem of applications and services grew around the network which this American company controlled, and the network became central to the American economy [1].
Other businesses had to connect to this company&#x27;s network, so that they could reach the company&#x27;s many end users. But the company jealously guarded its end users, inflicting onerous burdens on competitors, or disconnecting them entirely [2].That company, the American Telephone and Telegraph company, was eventually dissolved by the US Department of Justice due to charges filed under the Sherman Antitrust Act [3].Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, right, there aren&#x27;t any historical analogs to the App Store. Apple is a bastion of innovation and an important defender of privacy rights, and I can&#x27;t imagine that its management would ever recklessly endanger that by running afoul of antitrust law.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Carterfone" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Carterfone</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar_case?case=1075256560028657123" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar_case?case=107525656002865...</a>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._AT%26T" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._AT%26T</a>

In this case they have no choice. If you want to sell applications that run on Apple devices, you must sell them on Apple&#x27;s store. Doesn&#x27;t matter where they host their software and servers.There is no historical mainstream analog since desktop&#x2F;laptop OS software has never been so locked-down that it was impossible to install software without 1st-party permission. Even early videogame consoles had unlicensed games run on them, and the console vendors could only stop them by releasing new hardware.

Observation, what happens often is more about what the shysters can get away with than any intrinsic morality.

Apple is a government supported legal monopoly due to patents, licences and copyrights, so are many others, but they are too.If Apple wasn&#x27;t both the largest US phone maker and a legal monopoly, their behavior would not be as problematic, as you could (at least in theory, probably in practice too) sell other hardware to run ios&#x2F;macos, or resell legally obtained, and modified software without Apple restrictions.Whether their behavior is acceptable or not must be framed in a much larger picture. Companies are given legal rights by virtue of expectations of that being the best for society, and that&#x27;s the metric that companies should be measured against.Would it be good, and acceptable for society if all technology vendors&#x2F;brands acted exactly as Apple regarding the App Store?It&#x27;s quite easy to answer that with a no, since clearly tying many frequnt small purchases indefinitely to a bigger purchase is not something that can ever increase competition. As it will form a less effective market, it can&#x27;t be said to be desirable.

&gt; I trust ICANN more than I trust AppleThen you haven&#x27;t been paying attention. Apple at least has competition. ICANN is a government supported monopoly that has been systematically taken over by robber barons.

How can this thought persist in a world where everyone is supposedly more tech savvy than ever?Seems like those that wish to use Apple (consumers, Epic) should either deal with the consequences, beg the government for help, or build their own open standard.For me I lean towards building the open standard and teaching people how to use it. The App Store is for the lazy.

&gt; What happened to the days where everyone controlled their own domains&#x2F;IP addresses&#x2F;servers?Yeah in those days 99.9% of the world didn&#x27;t use it.

What happened to the days where everyone controlled their own domains&#x2F;IP addresses&#x2F;servers?Why would anyone want to risk being deplatformed? I trust ICANN more than I trust Apple and ${CLOUD_PROVIDER}

No, you can install software outside the store. Either native ARM (though there isn&#x27;t much available) or emulated x86 code. It does default to &quot;S mode&quot; which prevents installing apps from outside the store but it&#x27;s just a settings toggle away like Android&#x27;s &quot;Unknown Sources&quot;.

That was &quot;Windows RT&quot; (not to be confused with &quot;WinRT&quot;).

Doesn’t Windows on ARM only allow apps through the Windows Store?

It could be the case if AMP grows dominant; given the market share of Google Search, it could be enough to create a controlled (er, &quot;curated&quot;) web in a similar spirit.

That&#x27;s a little silly as an example because AOL was exactly like this back in the day and had curated channels. You could still access external sites if AOL was your ISP as well but anything inside of the AOL application was reviewed by AOL.Also, the web is not even a great analogy period since it wasn&#x27;t created by a private company. Apple created their phones, their App Store, they maintain it, and they provide the infrastructure for it. That&#x27;s nothing like the internet.

Even worse. Imagine millions of people knowing this and still buying these inferior phones.

I think you&#x27;re onto something. Why is it that anyone can write a program for PC, but we failed to prevent a system from rising up that wouldn&#x27;t let us do the same on mobile.

You are trying to divert the topic to something that&#x27;s likely never going to happen from something that gets HNers triggered all the time, even if it&#x27;s just remotely related to Microsoft.

Even worse. Imagine if the World Wide Web was not open and you had to go through a closed WWW like AOL and websites were &quot;under review&quot; by the providers and would take a 30% cut of your revenues or clicks on your web app or subscription service and websites require going only through that provider.Thank goodness that wasn&#x27;t the case.

Global market shares are the concern of global governments

Why is market share relevant?Also, Apple has a much bigger market share in the US simply because most of the world cannot afford an iPhone.

iOS market share in the US — which certainly is something US courts would care about — is nearly 60%. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share&#x2F;mobile&#x2F;united-states-of-america&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share&#x2F;mobile&#x2F;united-sta...</a>

Via the FTC[1]:&gt; Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a &quot;monopolist&quot; is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm&#x27;s market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;tips-advice&#x2F;competition-guidance&#x2F;guide-antitrust-laws&#x2F;single-firm-conduct&#x2F;monopolization-defined" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;tips-advice&#x2F;competition-guidance&#x2F;guide-a...</a>

Imagine if Microsoft only had 14% global market share.*[*] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share</a>

Because the rules of the App Store say that the apps that get charged the fee are those who rely on the purchases or payments as their primary function. Browsers have a different primary function.

The 30% cut only applies to in-app content. Doesn&#x27;t apply to physical goods or services delivered via the app. So things like UBER, AirBnb, SkipTheDishes etc are not part of it.

Web browsers are apps, e-commerce is in-app purchasing. App stores get 30% of Amazon.Come to think of it, why are web browsers excluded from the in-app fee?

Arguably, Microsoft also does it on Xbox.

There is a distinction between a general purpose computing device and a gaming console. I depend on my computer for important aspects of my life, not just entertainment.I perceive capricious behaviour like this ad a threat to my liberty and well-being.

FWIW, actually Sony doesn&#x27;t demand a 30% cut of all revenue from any company that makes an app for their store. You can have subscriptions to non-Sony services, and Sony doesn&#x27;t see a dime. Sony doesn&#x27;t demand a cut of Netflix subscriptions, for example, despite having a Netflix app available for download. Similarly, it doesn&#x27;t get a cut of Spotify revenue either.For PlayStation you pay the Sony tax for the convenience of integrating with their payment services, not because they&#x27;ll ban you for using anything else.It&#x27;s also a super different situation in general; for example, Sony actually often pays developers to develop for their store (e.g. PubFund [1]), and does free marketing campaigns for them. Console makers live and die by their access to a pipeline of new exclusive games, so they treat game developers well; Apple doesn&#x27;t, so it squeezes app developers for what it can. Hence why game developers are suing Apple but not Sony.1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.giantbomb.com&#x2F;pub-fund&#x2F;3015-7606&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.giantbomb.com&#x2F;pub-fund&#x2F;3015-7606&#x2F;</a>

Funny you mention Sony -- Linux support on the PS3 turned into a big deal. ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;OtherOS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;OtherOS</a> )Historically, other game consoles could be used a &quot;general purpose computing devices,&quot; such as the Sega Dreamcast with Windows CE and the Nintendo Famicom (which is short for Family Computer).

We have to either acknowledge that PCs&#x2F;Macs were a historical accident (a happy one, IMO), much like the open web of yore, or we have to legislate the shit out of everything that has a general purpose CPU, basically requiring every Turing machine sold to have an officially supported setting to enable running arbitrary code.It can be off by default, and probably should.But trying to hair split console from computer from cellphone makes less and less sense everyday and we all know it.

FWIW one of my biggest annoyances in gaming is how closed consoles are - i have a PS Vita, which is a great gaming handheld hardware-wise, but totally a victim to Sony&#x27;s whims software-wise (they even disabled and removed all PSM games).Similar with Nintendo&#x27;s Switch - Nintendo even tried to shut down a YouTuber&#x27;s channel just for mentioning homebrew&#x2F;jailbreaking for Switch.It is such a shame and honestly i wish these devices were as open as PCs are. That they aren&#x27;t is a testament to how much they have brainwashed people to think as normal that they have no control over their own devices and what they can do with them.

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a stretch to say that these platforms are being monopolistic either. Why should you not be able to write your own game and sell DVDs of it for people to play?Of course, in this case piracy would be the primary reason for the restriction, but I think it&#x27;s valid to look at places where the platform is controlled by a single vendor.

“What about” is not a valid argument though. If what apple is doing is wrong, no amount of hypocrisy by others will make it less wrong.Anyway, I think platforms need to be regulated to be more open. We need a right to modify along with a right to repair. When I pay for a product that happens to support downloadable software, I should be free to put whatever software on it that I want. If apple allowed sideloading on iOS like they do on macOS this would not have blown up to the degree that it did.

The price was right on a PS VR, so I got one and thought briefly about playing around with VR using Unity. The ecosystem was so locked down (and becoming an official developer such a challenge) that I gave up and never looked back.The appeal of developing in Apple&#x27;s ecosystem has always been the exposure to large audiences, the (relatively decent) tooling, and the ability to creatively actualize your ideas. That last one goes away when Apple starts looking more like Sony.I&#x27;ll leave it up to lawyers to decide if this is illegal, but I know this certainly makes me less excited about developing my next iOS&#x2F;OSX app

I mean, couldn&#x27;t we just replace Microsoft-&gt;Sony and PC-&gt;Playstation and the argument falls apart a bit?&gt; Imagine if Sony did this on Playstation. a) prohibiting the installation of non-PlayStation games and b) insisting that all purchases done via their store give them a 30% cut.Many platforms are like this -- and many also have the majority marketshare. Is this a call to redefine what platforms can and cannot control?

AFAIK Valve already tried the whole Linux as a gaming platform thing and gave up completely a few months ago.

Valve is also funding the Vulkan shim on OS X so they can sidestep Metal.

Valve is anticipating such move in a near future and investing in   gaming on Linux.

The last time MS pulled this they got whipped for it. That&#x27;s why they&#x27;re reticent.

It&#x27;s only ridiculous if it&#x27;s not good for their business. Maybe Microsoft is the one being ridiculous by leaving money on the table and not having a closed ecosystem.If your complaint is that it&#x27;s bad for the app developers or users, then that&#x27;s different, and maybe deserves criticism but not ridicule.

They would if they could get away with it. Look at telemetry and the general disrespect for users’ privacy preferences.

They have been shifting that direction with Windows 10 home edition, their &quot;app&quot; store, and reduced support of desktop development.  It&#x27;s a matter of time.

Ten % Is more than reasonable. But the point here is that not o my do they charge 30%, they forbide you from selling from outside their store.

There is no guaranty Google wont play the same tune. Google and Apple have essentially formed an oligopoly by this point.EDIT: this comment aged well: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.epicgames.fortnite&amp;hl=en_US" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.epicgames....</a>

It&#x27;s bad for consumers to the extent that iOS and Android phones aren&#x27;t interchangeable, and that&#x27;s a very large extent.&gt; what do you think is a reasonable fee for Apple to charge?That&#x27;s an interesting situation, because if the game was free Apple would charge nothing. And the more they bang on the drum about consumer safety, the more I want them to charge a fee appropriate for payment processing.If I was just arbitrarily setting the fees, I might go with something like 25% of the first 20 dollars per app per user, and then 5% afterwards.

A reasonable percentage is the one that Apple would charge if it had competition. Apple obviously cares about user experience, and does not want iOS apps to be split between multiple stores, so if they had to allow alternative install sources they would likely drop their fees by a lot, to make sure that developers have no incentive to promote alternative app stores. That lowered fee is the one developers should have been paying all along.If you really put the squeeze to them, the &quot;natural&quot; price would probably be a bit below cost for them, because the availability of apps is a selling point for their high-margin phones and tablets. That is why they are willing to host free apps, after all. (Although even then they take the developer fee)

Poor analogy. iOS does not have the market dominance that Windows&#x2F;Microsoft has. In this case, iPhones represent about 15% of the global smartphone sales and I think that the OS (in the US) is a 60&#x2F;40 iOS vs android split. There is a viable market. Developers, unwilling to pay the Apple fee, can switch to Android. If more apps are available on Android, that will shift the users away from iOS to Android.When I see folks complain about this, I like ask &quot;what do you think is a reasonable fee for Apple to charge?&quot; Zero is not a realistic answer as Apple does incur costs to run the app store. Moreover, they&#x27;re entitled to make a profit off the marketplace they created and support. So what&#x27;s a reasonable percentage?

You literally just right click and open. Hardly a hoop.

Yup that is the ultimate goal - to increase software and services revenue. 
That is what is mandating push to A chips in macbooks. 
Once the A chips are mainstream, then Apple will require companies like Adbobe, Intellij and even Microsoft to pay them 30% if they want the privelge of running their apps on MacOS.Want to run Photoshop, IntelliJ or Outlook, 30% of what you charge is going to Apple.

I fear that macOS is going this way. The amount of hoops to jump through to run third party apps seems to grow with every release.

&gt;Imagine if Microsoft did this on PCs.Just switch to a competitor! Go-to Linux or Mac. All good, no antitrust here. &#x2F;s

imagine if you favourite drug dealer was part of an organisation, and had to pay his cut... oh wait...

My kids both have Rasberry Pis running Gentoo and we play together, with me on a Mac (my last Mac, 2015 was the peak) via our shared server in the study.

Java edition will work on all x86 machines

Try playing Minecraft between your non-Windows 10 PC and anything mobile, or between anything and a Mac.

They have been working towards just that, and may manage it eventually.

In this case, was the Fortnight app removed from phones or was it just removed for new downloads from the app store? It sounds like the latter but the article is unclear.

You are confused. Apple never removes apps from users&#x27; devices simply because the new version did not pass review.Removing an app from the App Store, and removing it from user&#x27;s devices are two very different things.
When any app is removed in this fashion, all users who already have the app still have access to everything they had access to before. The app just isn&#x27;t listed on the App Store for new downloads.

This is also a security vulnerability: one decision by Apple, or by a court of law in a far-away country, and an app is gone from your phone. You lose access to the data held by this app.Easy, reliably DoS -- and the user has no means of fixing this vulnerability, other than rooting the phone and hacking around. Which is made ever less feasible.

Sorry to hijack but an outrageous example from Google: Chrome silently &amp; automatically detects when you login to a google website and uses this to log you into Chrome with that same account. They then hide the option to disable this in advanced settings. They are now trying to create a monopoly in the browser and steal additional data.

Where did you get the idea that Apple is selling iPhones at a loss?

No, they never have. iPhone hardware has basically been AAPL’s biggest cash cow with margins around 50%

iPhone is one of the highest margin products in apples ecosystem

You&#x27;re confusing carrier subsidies with Apple selling at a loss... Apple never sold phones at a loss, the carriers did. Apple always gets paid.

Does Apple still sell phones at a loss? If so they are subsidizing eyeballs for app devs and need to somehow get paid back for this.

I love that it needed a gaming company to stir up a discussion about all this and even put your comment on top on HN where it&#x27;s usually the praise for this closed environment which ends up being upvoted!2020 is really an interesting year.

This is exactly what Microsoft did with the first surface tablet running arm. The original plan was to go all in, but the backlash and support the. Was so bad they dropped the effort going into Windows 10.

I think thats disengenuous by Apple. Security gets you 5%, maybe 10. Not 30%. Let&#x27;s face it their service to developers isn&#x27;t exactly first rate.

They say that, but this removal has exactly nil to do with security. Apple was getting $300m &#x2F; year in revenue from this one app. Does it really cost that much to check this app for viruses? I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;ll be winning in court with this argument.

windows, is based because of the underlying os system fundamentals. once you&#x27;ve sandboxing in place. i.e apps are restricted to user level. then malware becomes something of the past.

Apple says they do it because of security reasons. Windows&#x27; open and liberal way of doing things made it a fertile ground for millions of viruses. But I still think every OS should be open for developing and distribution of software no matter how serious malware threat is.

As much as I know people who use windows would hate it, there’s really nothing preventing them from doing so morally. It’s their software, they steer it as they see fit. It would end up pushing a lot of people into Linux probably, or inspire the rise of something new.

But you don&#x27;t understand, I want my uSeR eXpErIeNcE at the cost of choice and freedom.
And your point is completely true, if Microsoft did this, all hell would break loose.

Except Microsoft did not create and sol you the hardware?

No consumer has the expectation that an Xbox will be capable of playing Playstation exclusives.

&gt; Microsoft already does exactly this on console.I never thought about it like this. It could be viewed differently because the Xbox is a game console and the iphone is a general handheld computer, but perhaps it should be illegal to restrict users installing software on your device by any means they choose, though there&#x27;s no reason for you to support those means.

&gt; This is just three big corporations fighting over their respective slices of the pieYes, this is how capitalism works. The companies can be started by virtuous, far-sighted dreamers, like Steve Wozniak, Larry Page and John Lennon, but then they get infused by money from venture capitalists and investors who just want ROI.Once they hire more than 5000 people, the edges of the company are not controlled by dreamers - worker bees are employed to make money by leveraging whatever is there to be leveraged. And so the mission drifts.Or else, the company fails or disappears, which is what happened to John Lennon&#x27;s company, Apple Music.We need to rethink capitalism, so companies can grow to medium size, and stay there, providing good things to their customers in a virtuous, mutually beneficial way.

i’m not sure it’s fair to equate a general computing platform to a game system

Not really true until physical goes away (which we&#x27;re pretty close to...)

No, it isn’t the same. Far from it. Microsoft and Sony don’t prohibit linking to external signup &amp; account management, which is why I can resubscribe my FFXIV account from a console.Apple’s rules prevent vendors from linking to external service account setup&#x2F;management. You cannot even mention the existence thereof, let alone link to it or advertise the options provided therein. Consumers are explicitly kept in the dark about any method other than payment through the App Store.That’s the stunning uppercut. The size of Apple’s fee is merely a follow-up kick to the nads.This is why service providers, from Hey.com to Netflix, have a special irritation for the App Store rules, and since this rule directly distorts markets by affecting consumer choice is why so many competition regulators have a file open about it.

&gt; When will we see the Google Stadia game streaming app on the XBOX?Bold of you to assume Google will keep that alive for a particularly long time.

I’d love to see multiple legitimate cross platform stores, especially Steam.But I don’t trust game developers to run those stores. They’re total cowboys and they’d probably be full of security holes and privacy issues.

&gt;Microsoft already does exactly this on console.Yes, and that&#x27;s also bad.

Microsoft already does exactly this on console. When will we see the Google Stadia game streaming app on the XBOX? Does Microsoft really not take a cut of VBucks bought on the Microsoft store?This is just three big corporations fighting over their respective slices of the pie, if you think any of this is being said or done for your benefit I’m sure Epic has a plentiful supply of really tasty Koolaid for you. But no pie, sorry.

Plus if your game is sold in their store you have to play a percentage as well.

Epic does charge a percentage of sales for use of the unreal engine....

If you&#x27;re a Hacker News reader you do, but does the general population? The iPad Pro has been promoted as a laptop replacement, for example.

The difference is that if you own an Apple device, you knew you were buying into a walled garden ecosystem. Windows was not sold that way, so for them to cut off unapproved apps would be a bait and switch.

they don&#x27;t have a price tier that goes negative

This got me wondering... What happens when the price of an in-app purchase is negative?  Does Apple pay the developer 30%?

The only reason Microsoft and Apple don&#x27;t do that in their desktop OSs is because they were products of their generation. They will probably will never have to do it anyways, because the marketshare of mobile will continue to grow as desktops slowly die. Eventually all major platforms will take a share.

10 years from now people will think it was crazy that you couldn&#x27;t publish a totally legit app just because you had a payment button on the app. It would be one thing for APPL to charge a low fee for listing an app to cover their costs of hosting and review, but this is 100% about squeezing everyone, because they can

It&#x27;s the pricing too.  Apple&#x27;s 30% fee on the payment processing for in app purchases is insane and clearly anti-competitive.  Developers can use Stripe, Paypal, etc for literally 10x less.

This misrepresents and skips over Apple’s great offence, which is why a bunch of others who don’t know the half of it are piping up with their comparisons to the PlayStation store etc.The most egregious part of Apple’s rules, and the reason that online service providers have a special loathing, is that apps are disallowed from linking to, advertising, or even mentioning that it is possible to sign up&#x2F;subscribe&#x2F;buy&#x2F;rent outside of the app.This is why you won’t see MMOs like FFXIV through the App Store, and is why you can’t sign up for Netflix, or even follow a link to their sign-up, from within the app.

I&#x27;m pretty sure that&#x27;s the fantasy every UWP and Microsoft Store executive jerks off to.

But you don&#x27;t _have_ to be on the Epic Game Store to sell a PC game. You can be on Steam. Or itch.io. Or make your own store. Or just host it on your own website.

Imagine Epic doing the same, with a 20% cut through the Epic Game Store, for PC games. And to ensure they are the Gatekeeper, they pay guarantees to Publishers&#x2F;Developers to exclude retail and other platforms.Oopps... They do exactly this.This is not to defend Apple nor Google. But Epic is by no means better, just not as big as A&#x2F;G.

Sadly Mozilla seems to do something similar with Firefox, likely as another round of copying the most stupid Chrome decisions.The recently released new &quot;stable&quot; version of Firefox for Android that supports just 9 specific extensions at the moment might be actually even worse than Chrome.

I recently learned Google Chrome does something similar with browser extensions[1]. You cannot[2] install .crx files that have not been published to the Chrome Web Store.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.chromium.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;continuing-to-protect-chrome-users-from.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.chromium.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;continuing-to-protect-chro...</a>[2] Unless you&#x27;re using Linux or the enterprise version of the browser.

Tech-savvy and power users would hate it. It would represent both a loss of freedom and a loss of capability.Non-technical users would love it. It would offer them an environment much more secure and free of malware where they can install applications without fretting about getting the latest CryptoLocker type trojan. Finding Windows software on the open web is kind of like driving around the ghetto and cruising for drugs. Are you installing from firefox.com or fᎥrefοⅹ.com?Apple tries to walk the line and keep both these user groups happy. It&#x27;s hard. So far they&#x27;ve handled it by designing MacOS more for the first group (it has an App Store and controls but they&#x27;re optional) and iOS&#x2F;iPadOS more for the second group.

Heh, game publishers are responsible for their decisions, not some &quot;cruel&quot; Epic who seduced little foolish publishers.

That&#x27;s not right...but imagine that...but every app and mobile game in the world. That&#x27;s Apple. It&#x27;s different.

Epic is famous for buying exclusive rights for games to make people play on their store. I hope they like eating their own food now.

That is the same argument that could have been applied to any one of the controversial tech monopoly issue beforeWouldn’t MS want to secure its laptops by bundling a browser?Wouldn’t I have equally private and financial documents on a PC? location&#x2F;gps can’t be that much of a differentiator.It is monopoly bullying whoever they can. They just happen to not directly affect us, unless we happen to be a developer making lot of money or compete with apple in any way.

Beyond the obvious difference that Microsoft has a monopoly marketshare on PCs, and Apple has a minority marketshare of mobile devices, mobile devices are categorically different because they are always with you. This generates a whole different slew of concerns around privacy and apps being able to access your information with or without your consent.By maintaining control over which apps can be sold to end users via the App Store, Apple is able to offer a layer of control over how these apps can access (or not) your personal data.There&#x27;s nothing ridiculous about wanting to maintain data privacy&#x2F;security on mobile devices, and that being of a higher priority with mobile than with a PC.

Imagine if Microsoft did this on PCs. a) prohibiting the installation of non-windows store software (sideloading) and b) insisting that all purchases done via apps give them a 30% cut. I think this is a ridiculous practice on the behalf of Apple.

&gt; The pro is that the security model of an iphone is better than probably anything else one could buy.Exploits for iOS are cheaper than exploits for Android because exploits for iOS are so plentiful.

Exactly.  There are pros and cons to this sort of model.  The pro is that the security model of an iphone is better than probably anything else one could buy.  The con is that apple makes the rules about what goes and stays.  Given the popularity of this app, I could see a kid wanting an android instead for this reason.  On the other hand, Apple could easily make the case that this is to prevent scams, maintain parental controls, etc.

Yeah, so let&#x27;s impose our will upon them. For their own good!

Please. Whatever strawman you are trying to construct is missing the point.I do not buy Apple products as a status symbol. I buy them because they work. I won&#x27;t even say the products are good, there are a lot of things I&#x27;d like to see change. But they are the best thing on the market for getting my work done.My laptop and phone are my hammer and workbench. The iPhone and MacBook are far and away the best product for the work I do, which is not iOS or MacOS development. They&#x27;re simply the best general computing solution on the market right now.

Plenty of people have no idea what they are getting into when they buy Apple devices as a status symbol.

I disagree it makes sense on a console.Phones can be used to:-communicate-consume media-browse the web-play gamesConsoles can be used to:-play games-consume media-browse the web-communicateI fail to see the difference to be honest.

I keep hearing &quot;general computing device.&quot;Define this.

I disagree.The model makes sense for a console, as it&#x27;s a very specialized device. A smartphone or a tablet are much closer to a general computing device. How many times has Apple said the iPad is a laptop replacement?

Apple&#x27;s, basically. That&#x27;s OK. Let Apple screw people. It&#x27;s a good opportunity for competition to develop. Or we can regulate Apple and competition won&#x27;t develop.

The device may be yours but the App Store belongs to Apple. Can you walk into a Walmart and start selling your stuff?

Who&#x27;s device is it?  Apple&#x27;s or the customer that paid for it in full?

I&#x27;m sure if you install some version of Linux in your iPhone you can do whatever you want. But you&#x27;re probably using iOS.

Agreed it shouldn&#x27;t be illegal, but Apple (or any hardware &#x2F; software maker) should be allowed to do everything in their power to make this extremely inconvenient by putting in hardware blocks, bricking logic, updating their software regularly with new obfuscation techniques, etc. and also, voiding the warranty if there is evidence of tampering with hardware or software.

I am not defending closed platforms, but technically, you are free to jailbreak your phone, they&#x27;re just not obligated to provide any support after that, right?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IOS_jailbreaking#Legality" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IOS_jailbreaking#Legality</a>

Apple is more than welcome to put whatever rules they want on their systems. My phone is not their system though, it’s mine! If I want to run tmux&#x2F;fetchmail&#x2F;ocamlc on it then it’s my problem not theirs!

There&#x27;s no law preventing anyone selling a smart phone without the limitations on your freedom you find objectionable.But similarly, there&#x27;s no law requiring anyone to sell products that allow you to do whatever you want with them once they&#x27;ve been bought.You can argue for such a law, but competition law is a pretty weak place to start.Arguably, Apple is creating a market by their policies: the fact that it&#x27;s not filled with competitors indicates only that most people don&#x27;t care.

Honestly, where is the actual harm done here?Again, this is just out of touch. Call it what it is - software companies want more money and want to use the market apple created for every last one of them for free.

People often accept restrictions on their freedom, but that does not mean those limitations aren&#x27;t harmful.We should be able to install what we want on a general purpose computing device. You can already see the Apple mentality creeping into other companies like Mozilla, who suddenly find it acceptable to limit user freedom for questionable reasons, and the normalization of stripped user liberties that Apple champions is worrying.

You are thinking unilaterally on a multilateral issue...

That&#x27;s a pretty big straw man argument.  If Apple said all apps have to pay a 95% cut and all customers have to pay $20&#x2F;mo to use Internet on their phones then they&#x27;d nearly instantly lose massive market share and the backlash would be so severe that they&#x27;d never regain that market share.  In other words; they&#x27;d never do that.

I wonder if you are having in mind the same government that wants a hefty cut of the sale of TikTok to Microsoft.

&gt;As an extreme example imagine if Apple tomorrow said that all apps have to pay a 95% cut instead of a 30% cut and all customers have to pay $20&#x2F;month to use Wifi or internet on their iPhone.If they did they did this with the app store as used by existing iphones, then that would probably cause them to get in trouble, but if they made a new app store with these policies that was only used by a new model of iphone, then while extreme, I&#x27;d think it&#x27;s within their rights. It&#x27;s not that long ago that feature phones with limited app selection and internet browsing as a premium feature were a thing.

&gt;if Apple tomorrow said that all apps have to pay a 95% cut instead of a 30% cut
But Apple could easily say &quot;no more 3rd party apps&quot; -- again, equally unlikely given the values those apps bring. But zero 3rd party apps is precisely what the iPod was, no?

I don&#x27;t agree. Millions (maybe even billions) of people user their devices and the country absolutely should regulate their systems. As an extreme example imagine if Apple tomorrow said that all apps have to pay a 95% cut instead of a 30% cut and all customers have to pay $20&#x2F;month to use Wifi or internet on their iPhone. Obviously this is unlikely to happen but then I would expect the govt. to intervene.If Apple want to impose rules without any government oversight, they are free to start their own country with their own government and impose their own rules.

Like Microsoft pushing internet explorer on Windows?

Regulation often does more harm than good, and I&#x27;d agree with you if intellectual property didn&#x27;t exist. Apple&#x27;s entire business model rests on copyright and patents which make it impossible for competition to challenge their position. (Think about the products which would emerge if people were free to reverse engineer, modify, and redistribute Apple&#x27;s technology.) This artificial advantage comes with a price, and that price happens to manifest as regulation by the same entity which enforces its ability to make its insane profits. If the government thinks they&#x27;ve taken their artificial advantage too far, they&#x27;re ethically free, or even obligated, to artificially limit that advantage.

Regulation and &quot;disruption&quot; are not mutually exclusive in theory.Smartphones and &quot;apps services&quot; come as a whole and are commodity (drug?) enough to be somehow regulated. Then, again, I&#x27;m french :)Choice for non hackers feels pretty much limited to choosing apple|google|huawei|... poison pill or rejecting the whole smartphone+cloud+5g+... stuff.

I don&#x27;t think this should be regulated at all. Apple should be able to impose their rules in their systems. Let&#x27;s be clear about this, if people are choosing to buy these black-box closed handheld computing devices, there are consequences that come with that choice.

Regulation isn&#x27;t done by the administration. There is a specific bipartisan antitrust committee that handles these issues.

They may win the battle but still lose the war.How many companies will look at situations like this and decide not to bother with developing for Apple platforms? I&#x27;ve already stepped back my efforts to support MacOS (I don&#x27;t target iOS at present). Too many hoops, too much control freakery, and no real comeback if they ever decide that they don&#x27;t want me to publish on their platform. The balance of power in the relationship is simply skewed too far in favour of them, and a tiny misunderstanding could end my business. These companies have far too much unchecked and unregulated power.

I think that Apple will prevail in this legal fight . Apple is in good terms with this administration. Even when the social media has taken the blame by Congress, it has been google, Facebook and Twitter that have come under fire - but Apple not so much. And currently the US is in a position where how heavy handed the treatment is dependent on your relationship with the administration.

I hope it does.Monopolies lead to stagnation, rising prices, and inferior product quality. Even though Apple is not a monopoly in the strict sense, I think we consumers will benefit from alternative app store - or Apple opening up the platform.I believe one can still have (moderately) secure ecosystem without it being a walled garden.

Wonder if that false message could get them in trouble with consumer rights laws?

Who else is apple competing with to put apps on iphones? Compared to android where you have indy devs, samsung store, play store, or any other store; it&#x27;s a clear monopoly.

&gt; they&#x27;re not a monopolyAs is well known with anti-trust lawsuits that depends on how one defines market.As is less known, anti-trust lawsuits don&#x27;t actually require monopolies.

&gt; My main gripe is that they&#x27;re behaving as if they&#x27;re bringing value that the developers are riding on, when in reality nobody would buy iPhones if it weren&#x27;t for the value that many developers are bringing to the platform, often at no cost to Apple.Counterpoint: the consistency, convenience, and safety of the App Store and broader iOS platform is part of why so much money is spent there.[EDIT] but yes I think their cut should be lower. They are definitely delivering a ton of value to developers, though, and part of that is created precisely by some of the restrictions that developers love to complain about.

Apple has 49-65% of the phone+tablet market in the USA. People keep forgetting it&#x27;s irrelevant if Android is more popular the world over. Countries only bring anti-monopoly decisions based on their country&#x27;s market, not the world market.Further, the market for &quot;smartphones&quot; is not Apple vs Google. It&#x27;s Apple vs Samsung vs Motorola vs LG vs Sony. Those are smartphone makers. At the 50%+ marketshare, Apple has more than double the market share of it&#x27;s next biggest competitor.Further, as pointed out elsewhere you don&#x27;t have to have a monopoly for being sued for anti-competitive behavior.

Epic effectively pulled it themselves when they unilaterally broke their agreement.I think Apple&#x27;s cut is egregious but at the same time, they&#x27;re not a monopoly. My main gripe is that they&#x27;re behaving as if they&#x27;re bringing value that the developers are riding on, when in reality nobody would buy iPhones if it weren&#x27;t for the value that many developers are bringing to the platform, often at no cost to Apple.

To me it feels like borderline libel, but I doubt you could prove damages.

To me it feels just poor wording, like often in the app store.

I think if apple rejects an update, the older version still exists. I could be wrong. What epic would have done after getting rejected for the latest update is pull the whole app. Then the message that appeared is correct. Apple didn&#x27;t remove the older version of the app but epic

If I go to the App Store on my phone, and go to my &quot;Purchased&quot; list, Fortnite is still listed there. I wasn&#x27;t up to date, and clicking on &quot;update&quot; gives the message:<pre><code> &quot;Fortnite&quot; No Longer Available. The developer has removed this app from the App Store.
</code></pre>
Interesting wording. I wonder if they only have one message for pulled-by-Apple vs pulled-by-dev?

The bigger the bully, the harder they eventually fall.

TOS can&#x27;t violate laws though. A contract that is in violation of the law isn&#x27;t enforceable.  Epic is looking for a judgement to make it illegal.

It may go down that way or not. It is unwise to predict the outcomes of lawsuits of this magnitude. Epic is no small insignificant company with a public defender. Also this suit is probably more of a signal that they mean to have a fight. Epic is not without significant extrajudicial leverage in this situation.

I&#x27;m guessing the crux of the argument will be that the ToS are illegal in this respect?

Epic also has lawyers. This bit is just a quick chess opening, the real battle is a few moves down the line from here.

They will lose as the TOS clearly indicates the rules and Epic agreed to them. This is basic contract law. Apple has a massive team of experienced lawyers.

Epic stated that they want to create their own separate app store outside of apple, but are unable to because apple does not allow sideloading.So no, Epic doesn&#x27;t want to run on Big Brother&#x27;s platform.

It stopped being Big Brother&#x27;s platform when they sold their first phone to a consumer.

I like the parody, but it&#x27;s not really equivalent.The original Apple parody was to convince consumers to switch from one platform (PC) to a different platform (Mac).Now, maybe you believe Apple, in the form of iOS, has become Big Brother. Fine, in that case, Epic should provide its own gaming platform.But Epic isn&#x27;t trying to destroy Big Brother here. It still wants to run on Big Brother&#x27;s platform. It just doesn&#x27;t want to give up any revenue to do so.Shrug.

The lawsuit literally references 1984 and Orwell, and the ad... Hilarious!

Just thought this and came here to say the same. Well done then Epic.

My favourite is trying to spin two billion dollar companies fighting over percentages as some “big brother” battle. I don’t remember this part of 1984.

A PR stunt that consumers and small businesses could benefit from. 30% decimates indie studios and makes some apps fiscally nonviable.

Everyone fell for the Hey! stunt too what do you expect?

A PR stunt from Epic and everyone&#x27;s falling for it.

Epic Games has filed a lawsuit [1] and published a Fortnite-themed parody of Apple&#x27;s &quot;1984&quot; [2] to get some publicity for it.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.unrealengine.com&#x2F;apple-complaint-734589783.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.unrealengine.com&#x2F;apple-complaint-734589783.pdf</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=euiSHuaw6Q4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=euiSHuaw6Q4</a>

&gt;Android allows developers to integrate Stripe and take customer&#x27;s credit cards and bypass the 30% cut.You are completely wrong.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;9&#x2F;21003553&#x2F;google-play-store-fortnite-epic-games-30-percent-cut-dispute" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;9&#x2F;21003553&#x2F;google-play-stor...</a>

Android allows developers to integrate Stripe and take customer&#x27;s credit cards and bypass the 30% cut.Yet, many apps choose have direct Play Store purchases, since that convenience might translate to a higher conversion rate.Android also allows third party apps to be installed.Your argument doesn&#x27;t hold up in light of all of this.

I would be satisfied if they would allow you to charge a premium to use IAP instead of forcing all pricing to be the same (even though they take a big cut of the IAP).

They can do something like Sign in with apple. If you are offering an alternative payment option, there should be an apple payment option too. If they are forced to do that Apple probably won&#x27;t allow different pricing for it too.

If Apple allowed other payment methods, that would incentivize developers not to go through Apple at all. Even paid apps would switch over to an unlock model in order to avoid the 30% cut.So I think it&#x27;s very unlikely that Apple will allow other payment options. It&#x27;s more likely for their 30% to go down, but even that&#x27;s questionable.

This could be great news.Might finally get the ball rolling on a court case to stop the huge app store abuses by Apple and Google.

I&#x27;d also guess that the Processor&#x2F;CC Companies likely charge a bit more for this specific &#x27;industry&#x27;; Processors and CC Companies often look at the products you are selling and what the overall risk is for things like chargebacks.This is part of why a lot of mom &amp; pop shops still have a 5 or 10 dollar minimum for card transactions; When I worked at a computer shop in an almost-sketchy neighborhood our minimum fee was Two whole dollars.Given the frequency of refunds and the like, I&#x27;d assume Epic is probably not making much, if anything extra on top of this.This may actually close a ban-hopping&#x2F;stalling gap. I&#x27;ve seen people claim that if you do a refund for an App store purchase, the publisher may not even know about the refund for 2-3 months after it was requested&#x2F;granted. This likely shortens Epic&#x27;s time to react and ban people for requesting fraudulent refunds.

I mean, in theory third party payment processors still take a cut. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a dollar on a 7 dollar payment. But it&#x27;s also not marginal.The credit card companies themselves charge 3.00%+0.10 at the reasonable maximum (or roughly $0.31). That is still not even counting the payment processor&#x27;s fees (which pay the credit card company&#x27;s fees for you).I mean the &quot;7 dollar price&quot; is all artificial anyway, it doesn&#x27;t really cost Epic anything to make the product of those 7 dollars (it&#x27;s economic rent extracted from the intellectual property they maintain). Either way Epic is making more money on this move even if the whole extra dollar is fees.

While it&#x27;s probably not 10%, the transaction cost will come out of the transaction when processed by Epic.  Normally that comes out of the 30% that Apple takes.  Either way, the purchaser is saving $2 and the developer gets a larger share; this doesn&#x27;t seem like a bad thing, especially when the developer is going to be spending a decent amount of cash fighting the App Store monopoly.

The 30% includes payment processing, I think.  So $7.50 would be a roughly equivalent price.  At $7.99, 80% of the savings are going to the customer.

I mean their in-game currency has essentially no cost for them whatsoever, any revenue they gain from it is pure profit.

Even if they did pass the savings to the consumer completely, they would still likely make more money as more people buy it. This effect is much larger than the $1 they gain

... the developer on Thursday implemented its own in-app payment system that bypassed Apple’s standard 30 percent fee....1,000 V-bucks, which is roughly equivalent to $10 in-game Fortnite currency, now costs just $7.99 if you use Epic direct payment instead of the standard Apple payment processing. Normally, that amount of currency costs $9.99. Epic says, in this case, customers keep the extra savings, not the company. That cast the new arrangement as a pro-consumer move instead of a greedy power play.My math skills aren&#x27;t the best but it seems like epic is still pocketing almost an extra dollar there than previously (almost 10%), indicating that this is move motivated by financial gain (if not greed). Of course Apple stands out as the bigger case of &quot;highway robbery&quot;.I am somewhat curious on how much apple spends on maintaining the app store and how much of that %30 is net profit.

This will cost Epic more money than it will Apple. Either company can end up dragging the legal battle on for years. In the meantime Epic&#x27;s game won&#x27;t be available on Apple platforms. By the time that battle is over, the game is probably not popular anymore.

Epic has the massive financial war chest to see this through, though. If anyone can afford to push this through the legal process, it&#x27;s Epic.

I wouldn&#x27;t underestimate Epic here. They&#x27;ve already succeeded at securing cross play from xbox and playstation and are strongly motivated to keep their app on iOS.Given the money at stake, they are also strongly motivated to do it without paying Apple&#x27;s 30% ransom

finger crossed.Fortnite is not really the hill I have seen this battle take place. For example Apple also rejected the satirical app of a Pulitzer winning journalist (it does not make their app good but suggests that the content was probably not just a fart joke).Still, people should be able to install whatever they want on their phones, without Apple playing walled garden.It is not good for devs getting squeezed by the platform owners, it is not good for people being able to install whatever they want, and quite frankly it is not good for freedom of speech either.I am not including Google here since their policy is a bit more defendable, you can sideload apps without too much trouble, I even believe that Epic uses that mechanism to do not have to pay the 30%.

Pretty tiny. Consider that the Apple App Store has infected more users (with Xcodeghost malware) than all the sideloaded apps on Android combined.

How much of a security risk is side loading apps?  It seems pretty large to me, even on a fortified system like iOS.

Big corps don&#x27;t take those decisions lightly.Obviously stakeholders and lawyers were involved. Marketing saw an opportunity and jumped in.

&gt;They even had a video ready to go!The beauty of their main technology product, a realtime engine is that it can create videos like that on much smaller timelines than traditional CG or a live shoot.Honestly with the right talent that could have been pulled together surprisingly fast.

Such a staged drama by Epic Games. They even had a video ready to go!

1. Epic violated Apple&#x27;s ToS (apparently intentionally, to start a legal battle that they want to have right now due to EU investigations into abuse of monopoly power by large tech companies like Apple and Google)2. Apple has to enforce their ToS (there is legal precedent that if you don&#x27;t enforce your own rules, then you don&#x27;t care about them - so it&#x27;s a good idea to follow your own rules) so they had to boot Fortnite from the App storeThe big deal is that this might trigger significant legal judgements that may determine what tech giants can or cannot do on their platforms.

Ok, lets just set aside our strawmen for a second and ask: why did Apple do this and what&#x27;s the big deal anyway?* Why did Apple trounce these folks? My first thought is, ridiculously intrusive anti-cheat?
* Then, assuming that&#x27;s the case and you&#x27;re ok with letting someone else remote-admin your machine, can&#x27;t you just install Fortnite directly anyway?So what&#x27;s the big deal exactly?

Another book that touches on the subject is &quot;The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets&quot; by Thomas Philippon.

&gt; What has Europe done in the last decade in anti-trust?They have been squeezing billions of dollars out of Facebook and Google, for one thing.

&gt; We may think of how Europe deals with big business as extreme and radicalWhat has Europe done in the last decade in anti-trust? Vestager brought a series of suits that got overturned by the courts, or charged monopolists peanuts for brazenly violating the law.

I want to start reading &quot;Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History&quot;, which covers the now failed anti-trust system in the United States, but I am worried for my blood pressure, as it covers many other ways in which our government almost exclusively works for its corporate owners.We may think of how Europe deals with big business as extreme and radical, but it&#x27;s only because we got so far away from the reasonable middle ground of big money and citizenry coexisting without f---ing each other over.

Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store